I dislike shopping, and it's hard to get in much female bonding when so many women want to shop like it is an olympic sport. I'm a sprinter when it comes to shopping, but most women are long-distance runners. I can only do one lap around a store, and then I'm done and looking for a cafe and a glass of wine.
The whole exercise is depressing: trying on bad clothes that cost too much money, and then self-loathing because the clothes don't fit right but buying them anyway to make yourself feel better only to later feel bad again because you spent so much money. I cut myself off from that cycle a long time ago, and I don't know how any woman could consider it her idea of "fun."
Even after losing weight and firming up, shopping didn't become terribly more enjoyable. But it did involve a lot less self-loathing. Sometimes, a lot of times, clothes don't fit right because, well, you could stand to eat less and run more. But when I completely changed my life and my body, and clothes STILL didn't fit right, I had to find another culprit. Because most women spend time obsessing about getting into a size 2 or 4, and I had always been one of those women, I assumed that once you reached one of the magical slim sizes, everything would fit like a dream. In fact, I thought you'd be able to just buy clothes right off the rack without even trying them on because hell, everything looks perfect on a size 2 or 4, right?
Well, I was wrong. Very, very wrong. It turns out that total crap comes in all sizes, and just because it's expensive and the label would make your friends writhe with envy doesn't mean it's not crap. In fact, the fancier the label and the higher the reputation of the brand, the more likely they are to try and sell you crap. They know you will give them the benefit of the doubt, and they turn around to make that benefit of the doubt into a very tidy profit indeed.
So, being a size 2 or 4 means I spend just as much time in the dressing room as I did when I was a size 6 or 6, except now I don't spend all that time hating myself and fighting back tears. Now I spend it loudly berrating the sweatshop finishes on "Italian" labels and wondering what kind of disfigured fit models designers are using these days. Now that I know clothes should fit me, I know that it's not my problem when they don't.
The Russian lover is partly to blame; he taught me all about the ways a woman should look when a woman looks good, and is never afraid to tell me that whatever I have just put on my body makes me look ridiculous. He is also never afraid to tell the other hapless women in any given dressing room that whatever they have just put on makes them looks ridiculous, although most of them are less grateful for that information than I am.
The Russian lover has ensured that while at times I may be out in public nearly naked, I am never out in public looking like my boyfriend lied to me before we left the house. I blame timid boyfriends and husbands everywhere for the absurd abuses of fashion I have to witness every day; maybe if more men were willing to step up and say "Just say no!" when the women in their lives step out of the dressing room, the clothing industry would finally have to raise its standards. Granted, more women would also have to be willing to just say no to the ice cream and the french fries and the beer; they'd also have to still be willing to sleep with their lovers even after being told that the $500 dress they adored on the rack makes their ass look like an ottoman.
When I was younger and without a boyfriend, I tortured my brother by making him assess my outfits before I went out. But I had no one else to ask, and I felt like I had to get a second opinion, no matter how unqualified or disinterested. One day he was finally fed up with having his sister back into the doorway of his room yet again with yet another new pair of pants asking "Does this make my butt look big?"
"NO!" he told me. "You know what makes your butt look big? Your FAT ASS makes your butt look big!" And then he turned around and slammed the door.
He came out a second later, apologizing profusely, terrified he had just made me into an anorexic. I was still laughing, and told him not to apologize, that it was about time he told me the truth of the matter. I never asked for his opinion again, though.
Years later when the Russian lover told me that my butt was just within his parameters of acceptibility, I got quite offended. I didn't know what to do with the whole "I like your butt but I wouldn't like it if it was any bigger" sentiment. I decided to be sensible and fixate on the "I like your butt" and ignore the "but." I also made sure to hit the gym, so that I would never have to go back to the butt I had left behind.